I thought I would start off today, going back to Suzuki Roshi, from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, called Mind, this is the chapter on Mind Waves. When you're practicing Zazen, do not try to stop your thinking. Let it stop by itself. If something comes into your mind, let it come in and let it go out. It will not stay long. When you try to stop your thinking, it means you're bothered by it. Don't be bothered by anything. It appears as if something comes from outside your mind, but actually it is only the waves of your mind, and if you're not bothered by the waves, gradually they will become calmer and calmer. So when we sit Sashin, usually what we're confronted with, in some way or another, are

[01:14]

desire and aversion, liking and disliking. This can take the form of thoughts, as well as other experiences that we have. This is the third day of Sashin, and we've had some time to probably sit with things we like and things we don't like. As someone with a very busy mind, I've often come to Sashin hoping for some calm, and I've often heard people over the years, having done many long Sashins, kind of have this

[02:16]

way of tackling it, which is, well, you know, if I put in my time on the cushion, if I suffer enough, maybe things are eventually going to stop. I've spent a number of times in my life trying to predict a Sashin, how it will go, but it's never really lived up to, fortunately it has never lived up to my expectations, or been what I expect, it's probably a better way to say it. It used to be, you know, after three days, things would be calm, and then it would start up again, a lot of the agitation and being caught up in busyness, or likes and dislikes.

[03:27]

But really, Sashin is about letting go, moment after moment. I want to go on just a little bit. Nothing comes from outside your mind. Usually we think of our mind as receiving impressions and experiences from outside, but that is not a true understanding of our mind. The true understanding is that the mind includes everything. When you think something comes from outside, it means only that something appears in your mind. Nothing outside your mind can cause you any trouble. So here we're in a situation which is both very constricted and very free.

[04:47]

We come into Sashin, and we have the intention that we're going to sit still for however many days we're here. It could be one day, for some of us it's seven days. And aside from jobs, and going to dokasan or practice discussion, basically our intention is to sit still, so we're not moving, it's a constricted physical posture. And although it's okay to move sometimes, our practice is to try not to move, to try and resist fixing the discomforts. So we try to remain still no matter what is going on in the mind or the body. If something uncomfortable comes up, we don't try to get out of it by shifting to another

[05:49]

position or leaving the zendo. But then, on the other hand, it's very freeing, which is also not so easy, because what do we do with our minds while we're in this still posture? And freedom is something we talk about that we want, but it isn't so easy to have mental freedom, because here our minds will just cause us all kinds of suffering. And so it's very easy to see how these causes are internal. We're sitting facing a wall, but often we're tormented by things, or we want to control

[06:55]

our minds, which is something that's actually impossible. Dogen says, establish your practice in delusion. That's all we really have, is delusion to work with. When I started quite a number of years ago, I knew that I could not sit one breath. That was a fact for me. The meditation instructions were too hard. The idea of following the breath was not possible because of, not just having a busy mind, but

[07:59]

actual inability to concentrate. So the reason I was able to start sitting was because I decided I was going to sit and not even try to follow the breath, I was going to start just with the posture. It was too much to ask to actually pull the mind back onto the breath. But eventually after taking the physical posture for actually what I think was months before before I could stop enough to begin to focus on the breath. This may sound, on a certain level what I'm talking about is very common, and a lot of

[09:09]

people have difficulty with the busyness of their minds. It actually, it really could cause a lot of suffering because I have actually had difficulties that I think are a little bit more intense in that I have found over the years certain things like reading. Reading is a big part of my job, but I find myself reading the same paragraphs over and over and over because of not being able to control the actual movement of my mind. And paying attention, sometimes listening is very difficult.

[10:13]

And fairly recently I actually consulted someone about this and because I was concerned about it, because frequently I would be in the middle of a conversation with someone and actually forget, either forget what I was talking about or completely disappear into some other internal world. And I've actually gotten some feedback from people who are close to me about that and they were offended by it actually and thought that I found them boring and that I wasn't interested in what they were saying and that was very painful to hear that because I've always valued my relationships, friendships, Dharma friends, all sorts of people as being you know primary in my life, but and to hear that somebody would think that I actually

[11:20]

was not interested in what they were saying was very difficult and painful to take. So, I would always say to them, you know, are you kidding, of course I'm interested in what you're saying, but and I would say that I couldn't help it, which is actually true, that I couldn't help this mind going off in a million directions. And then fairly recently I was told that some of the things that I have difficulty with describe a certain kind of attention problem. Now I don't want to go into that exactly, because that's not relevant here, except to say that it's something that I don't have control over and I actually have finally

[12:26]

come after so many years to understand that the mind really isn't something we have control over and the body isn't something we have control over. But despite all that, it's important to develop concentration, to practice concentration. I noticed that Hosan the other day said something to the effect that concentration wasn't his strong point and I wanted to raise my hand and say, me neither, but what came to my mind was the Eightfold Path and that there's right concentration, but there's also right effort and I've always thought the Buddha was very compassionate when he came up with the Eightfold

[13:27]

Path. I mean certainly it's true that enlightenment has all these different aspects to it. It's not just one thing. It's right concentration, it's right effort, right livelihood, etc. So I was very relieved to be able to acknowledge to myself that my concentration may be poor, but I have effort. So I was thinking about the Eightfold Path and the fact that they really boil down to three things, concentration, morality, and wisdom.

[14:28]

So we may have all these things going on in our minds that may be annoying, but the real point of it is for us to recognize their impermanence and their unsatisfactoriness and not having a self. The fact that they don't really exist as solid things. We have the opportunity to see mind objects or thoughts for just what they are. They don't just happen to us.

[15:45]

We have to be open to all the things that arise in the mind. The Theravadan Thai forest monk teacher Ajahn Shah says that there is no such thing as a To develop samadhi you don't have to bottle the mind up. That's not part of it. That's not the way that you do it. Like putting a lid on it. And it's not to prefer one thought to another. That there are good thoughts and there are bad thoughts. That basically you treat all thoughts the same. We often get ourselves into trouble by either wanting to get rid of all thoughts as though

[17:12]

there's a thoughtless state or to get rid of some and prefer the others. So Ajahn Shah says if you hold on to love, aversion will follow. And then Suzuki Roshi says it's better to have ill will than an idea of being good. If you have ill will and you see that that's better than having this idea about being a good Zen student or that you only have good thoughts. So this practice is really about letting go of everything over and over again.

[18:20]

And we can't get to this one point and say oh I can stop there. Because inevitably whatever we're trying to push away will come back. So Suzuki Roshi goes on to say when you have something in your consciousness you do not have perfect composure. The best way towards perfect composure is to forget everything. Then your mind is calm and it is wide and clear enough to see and feel things as they are without any effort. The best way to find perfect composure is not to retain any idea of things whether they

[19:28]

whatever they may be to forget all about them and not to leave any trace or shadow of thinking. Don't try to stop your mind but leave everything as it is. So I know I haven't been speaking for very long. Raul said something yesterday about how Dharma talks should be short but I actually prefer dialogue. Yes. Thank you Karen. I was thinking about how this focus on attention is brought up again and

[20:35]

again and how inanimate objects will give us feedback in subtle ways such as if you're not attentive while you're cutting a carrot you may slip and cut your finger or you burn a soup or what have you. And you're talking with your friend or listening to your friend and then her or him saying where are you and you have been inattentive that inanimate objects are more forgiving in some sense than animate objects. Yet we're relating to both and I'm wondering if you can offer a suggestion about how the practice of mindfulness around inanimate objects can help support our attention and relationship and support of inanimate objects especially the people that we're practicing with. I always thought people were more forgiving. Did you say inanimate objects are more forgiving?

[21:37]

Well we don't we don't hear about like our minds stray and we'll like find ourselves reading a paragraph over and over again the book isn't going to come up and slap you in the face. Whereas a person may actually say hey you know where are you where I feel I don't feel seen or heard that hurts my feelings and you're supposed to be supporting me and all of that. But you know it's not a hard to say test. It could go either way I think. But you're asking how this mindfulness working with inanimate objects can affect people. Our relationships to people because you had said that you were saying that well I am listening to you I can't I'm sorry that I was inattentive. I'll try I'll try better. Well I think that a lot of our what we do during our with our jobs here in the zendo and

[22:39]

work period you know are really oriented towards practicing that. You know it's whatever we're doing we're paying complete attention. I think you can also do that while you're in engaged with someone in the same way that you might while you're chopping a carrot. You can do the same practice. I personally find it easier to engage with people than inanimate objects. But I think really it's everything that you do is the same practice really. Two things maybe I won't get to the second one but the first one you gave a one sentence quote something about establish your practicing delusion. Yes. What do you think that means?

[23:45]

Well I meant a particular thing when I brought it up in this context which is we are only where we are right now. We can't try to be someplace else or decide oh I'm going to really practice when I'm in a better mood or when I have better concentration. You may be suffering now and not want to sit at all or you may be miserable and self-critical that you're not being a proper zen student or whatever but whatever it is that's where you practice. And so he says establish your practicing delusion. You start right now. This is the only moment there really isn't anything else. Thank you. I would like to say the second thing that is on my mind. I was talking again with Leslie about her recounting her experience being with her father when he was dying and

[24:54]

um she said uh as I recall her don't hold her to these words exactly but as I recall she said that she had had the opportunity to be in this situation where things were happening moment to moment and she didn't know what they were going to be and even though she became very tired she wanted to stay awake because she didn't want to miss something and I thought that made complete sense and I have been kind of using that I don't want to miss something as a little mantra the past day and I think to me it's very interesting because I think often when we're in session we many of us want things to be absolutely

[25:55]

silent we get very annoyed if people are making noise I tend to have gotten annoyed in the past when people are walking in and out a lot and I've heard people complain that the person sitting next and breathes too loud and um and they don't say please stop breathing but it almost gets to that you know and if it is if I take this position that I'm attributing to Leslie and I apply it then instead of being annoyed by all this my view is I don't want to miss anything so I'm just listening to all this stuff I'm not trying to figure it out I'm not trying to make sense out of it I'm not trying to think why is this person breathing this way or why are they walking in and out of the door why is that truck going by or whatever why is the bird tweeting you know I just I'm trying to not miss anything and for me that's a very interesting um uh kind of

[27:04]

opening up perspective now you know it may change by the afternoon but um it's more accepting of what's going on rather than fighting and wishing it would be different well I think that's a really good practice I mean it sounds like you're practicing awareness sometimes the language you're using like sounds a little bit um like you might be trying too hard or trying not to miss anything can be another form of desire of course it can um but the idea what you're I understand what you're saying yeah I think that's a good thing I mean there's a whole Japanese poem which I can't remember exactly how it goes but has something to do with you know you can't see the moon unless you see the flower that's blocking part of the moon um the you you know you don't see empty space you only understand it in the context of what's in it

[28:06]

so um there are a lot of things um going on and it's really our relationship to it and you're describing of course you know having aversions to noise which I think is really common um we're really here to experience things as they are not as we would like them to be I think a key thing and what Leslie said too though was when she said the least key for me when I'm here she said is she didn't know what was going to happen she didn't know what so she was really not trying to make something out of it uh as I understood it she was she didn't have an idea she didn't know her father was going to die that night she didn't say I must be here because he's dying she felt she needed to be there and it turned out he died that night and so each change

[29:08]

that happened she didn't know it was going to happen she didn't know what it meant etc etc so again I'm not excited yeah no I think that's a really great point I mean um so much of our teaching is about not knowing and what is knowing you know we want to know things but we can't know them and um being open to the next moment without trying to figure out what it is or predict what it is or fear what it is uh is is really an awakened practice um well thank you yes Ken uh maybe somewhat similar it feels a little similar to me one thing I've been enjoying practicing with this positioning was and possibly as a way of not getting caught by what we think of as bad thoughts or not reacting to what we think of as

[30:13]

bad thoughts are finding that I feel like it's my body and my mind is telling me things so when I feel pain in my legs I can sometimes think a sense of gratitude that my my body's trying to protect me and to really feel a sense of wonder that my body responded that it's kind of tuned that way so it puts it a different a different context on and with my mind it's odd sometimes I'll have a thought like I'll be wrapping my oriotic claws and I'll be wondering whether I'm doing it faster than somebody else which is a ridiculous thought but then to to look at that and say well I'm really competitive why why am I so competitive why do I feel we need to be competitive and then so that thought rather than having a value associated with it it's just it's just

[31:21]

telling me something and I can look at that and I don't need to pursue it any further than that but it's like wow there's something about me that feels like my worth is tied to you doing something and so and then I can let it go it's just kind of it feels freeing to have an attitude that the things that come up in your body and in your mind are just are telling you things and also you're implying to not judging them right I think that's a trap that we often get into is judging our thoughts or judging what you know body pain or um competitiveness whatever we whatever habit we find ourselves in is letting go of that judgment at the same time

[32:23]

Kathy? I'm back with that really radical statement that Suzuki Roshi made which is nothing outside your can trouble you and what popped into my mind when you said that was well I wonder how he did with that when his wife was murdered I wonder how he did with that when his daughter died and not in a contrarian kind of oh gotcha Suzuki um but thinking about how it is when we do this practice in the midst of some of the really catastrophic things that can happen in a person's life and that happen not necessarily to oneself but to someone we love um and I was remembering a Dharma friend talking about how she practiced letting go in the ICU

[33:31]

while she was sitting with her sister as she died from a suicide attempt and how she just kept letting go and that that made it possible to be there with her sister but there was still an extraordinary pain that was going on I'm kind of interested in the wondering if you could talk a little bit about the role of that pain you know the pain perhaps that you felt when someone you really care about said hey wait a minute are you paying attention to me are you here with me well I don't see anywhere where it ever says pain goes away the term suffering really and the meaning of it is an unsatisfactoriness is really different

[34:37]

I think from pain I had the same thought he did same response when I read that line at first that Suzuki Roshi said it's in the mind the way he says this is all within our mind because it's our minds that experience these events losing someone we love suffering out in the world so it is our mind experiencing them however I don't think we're really trying to make our pain some of us may be but we can't make our pain go away I don't think and nor do we want to accept part of this path is to

[35:39]

we feel the suffering of other people and we want to make it better and it's hard to really see that what that means really changes you can't so I think you have to feel that pain in order to really do the appropriate thing for example what this description of this person being with her sister dying from a suicide attempt that's extremely painful and I think if she removed herself from the situation she would have been no help and so we have to be willing to suffer I mean a lot of this practice here that we're doing is our willingness to suffer does that answer your question yeah thank you yes Eric well I'm very interested in this idea of do not try to stop your mind

[36:54]

because of course we're trying to concentrate and perhaps in a way to discipline our mind but I'm finding in this session perhaps the line between focusing and repressing can be kind of a point I've got outside stimuli with my work life things are kind of reaching an ugly sort of a crescendo so I'm very grateful to be able to be having the opportunity to see all that's happening but that provides sort of an undeniable you know it's like this tsunami of thought that is inescapable so I'm still learning this about do not try to stop the mind and how the activity of the mind doesn't have to be an impediment but it comes back to

[38:02]

I think the non-attachment is providing the difference yeah I don't think those the mind doesn't stop I mean minds think you know every body part has a function in the mind yeah thanks um but I have compassion for you because I I'm in that situation often um and I think just making friends with that state of mind I remember when I first started sitting as I was describing when I could not sit for one breath without a barrage of thoughts I was reading um Chogyam Trungpa's Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism and he said that meditation is not

[39:04]

about controlling the mind it's about making friends with the mind or peace with the mind Lisa? I really like the return in each talk these three days to letting go the practice of letting go not just let go and then it's done with um that more times the letting go happens or is practiced the easier it's getting for me to see oh it's time to let go again so that um that that it's almost like a crazy

[40:11]

let oh let go I think the faith that we can let go comes from having done it so many times even though what we're what we let go of okay it's it's not final things keep arising we keep clinging we keep having aversions but um over time I think that's where our faith develops this this repeated practice one exercise that I was helped with this past summer at a retreat it's the idea of taking three mindful breaths and then using the mantra open up to not doing and wait and watch when the doing starts again it will but there's there's somehow it's just like in the midst of of waves

[41:14]

creating just a little space and then watching them all come back in again but that just that respite opens the sense of that's what that space is thank you yeah how can I take one more diane had her hand up a couple things that may be tied together I'm not sure I'm curious if you think about them um the first is tied to judy and ken and talking about I heard a teaching once about uh being very curious in in our sitting practice so that instead of having these intentions to like we've been discussing push thoughts away to be curious kind of like what's behind them like oh I'm if I'm wrapping my orioke set quicker maybe the initial thought is well I'm competitive but is there something behind that in a bigger form of whatever so then

[42:25]

tied to that I'm thinking another thing keeps coming up from kind of children which I read in one of her books which said you know we're always so busy talking to the world we never have the opportunity to let it speak to us and I was thinking that perhaps the speaking or we're so busy talking our thoughts but it's not necessarily our thoughts it's how we conceptualize them and make them something that possibly they're not but I'm not sure if that's the right view and I'm wondering um you have any well on those being also tied together in the emptiness behind all of that that we can experience in those reprieves of well you first brought up the fact that um

[43:26]

you see different kinds of thoughts and looking into them generally you know in our practice we don't want to analyze them um we want to see thoughts appear but we don't want to investigate them too much intellectually while we're sitting because because what we're really practicing is letting go so we want to just more see the impermanence of them rather than analyze them but that being said we do practice um when we take precepts for example you know we do practice the good and refrain from evil so there is that now in terms of your the second part of your question though I'm not sure I understood what I was trying to yeah with the panel yeah what was that um what she had said was or what I remember was she said something like we're so busy

[44:32]

in our lives and everything speaking to the world like we're so busy thinking thinking thinking we never have those gaps to let the world speak to us and let it teach us and that's where I was tying it to Ken and kind of what um Judy was saying about Leslie's talk and having spent a week in the hospital with my stepmom when she was dying I totally get that and I get that there's things talking to her there's something telling us something but I'm not sure if this the speaking that we're still busy speaking is that us conceptualizing and making our thoughts to be real that's the question yeah well I think with you know with the speed of the discursive thinking they things become more and more real even though they're not yes we do contribute to making them very solid on a moment by moment basis but our zazen practices is meant to actually

[45:40]

undo that precisely so but but by letting go of each thought slowly we're opening more and more space so that you can actually listen and be more open to the next moment without having an idea in your mind about what that's going to be so what Leslie was describing and what Judy was describing about really being able to rest in awareness of the present moment to have that openness takes practice and that is really what we're doing in zazen it may not seem so deep all the time but it is so yes they're very completely interconnected so I'm sorry I went over I said it would be short anyway thank you for listening thank you for speaking

[46:43]

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